Two home losses to open a season is enough to kick-start the search for blame. It’s easy to heap it on a quarterback, the person so often with the ball, so often held responsible for producing concrete results. That’s especially easy in Washington, where Kirk Cousins is working under the franchise tag following his first full season that was full of fireworks, team records and warm feelings.
Not so two weeks into his second season in charge — a season in which he is no longer the man pursuing the top spot. Cousins entered training camp as the undisputed starting quarterback for the first time in his five NFL seasons.
But after some struggles against the Steelers and Cowboys, Cousins and his errant passes have drawn visible frustration from others wearing burgundy and gold. Cousins himself was not pleased Sunday afternoon following a game when he missed three opportunities for likely touchdowns — one to Jamison Crowder, another to DeSean Jackson, and a third to rookie Josh Doctson. Doctson was drafted in the first round to accent an already potent passing game. Cousins needs to make it go.
Which is why on Monday, Redskins coach Jay Gruden stood at the podium in Ashburn trying to pass blame around for the team’s early misfortune. Gruden was asked about his message to Cousins after the game, what he learned about Cousins when the quarterback struggled in 2014, if he thought Cousins’ confidence was wavering. Two losses in seven days will do that.
“Yeah, I think with Kirk, we just have to stay positive, you know?” Gruden said. “He’s not going to be perfect every week, that’s for sure. And no quarterbacks are. It’s just a matter of handling his business, going into work the next day and continuing to get better. Keep his head up and stay confident, stay poised, and take on a new challenge this week which is the New York Giants, which is a darn good football team, especially on defense. So he’s going to have some great challenges ahead of him and it won’t be the first time he has a couple of throws that he misses, but we’ve just got to all bounce back from it and recover and figure out ways to win the next game.”
A tour through Cousins’ early stats is misleading, but also shows his start is not abysmal. His completion percentage is 11th in the league. He led the NFL last season. Cousins’ 693 yards passing is third. He set the Redskins’ franchise record for passing yards a year ago. What those numbers don’t show are the high throws that tight end Jordan Reed or wide receiver Pierre Garcon yanked down for completions. Or the aforementioned possible touchdowns that Cousins did not complete in a four-point loss to the archrival Cowboys.
Gruden, a former quarterback who tutored Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton to Pro-Bowl status, was initially hired in large part to fix Robert Griffin III. How that worked out is clear. Griffin is gone, and Cousins is the starter in Washington because of Gruden’s preference.
Now, he has to straighten out his preferred quarterback who spent the second half of last season as hot as any quarterback in the league. Cousins became so efficient, the Redskins made the full switch from a run-first team to one that throws the ball no matter the circumstance. Six yards or 60 yards from the goal line, passes are being delivered. Cousins’ 89 passing attempts ties for the league lead coming into Monday. The Redskins are 31st in rushing attempts.
“I’d be standing up here looking like a fool if I said we’re a ’pound the rock’ type team right now,” Gruden said. “First two games, the proof is in the pudding, the numbers. … Now, a lot of our quick passes and a lot of our bootlegs are an extension of the running game, which are good, but we have not given the running game really an ample opportunity to flourish. That’s something we have to look at.”
In the past, Cousins went through phases where he threw successfully into tight windows but also delivered inexplicable interceptions. When he was picked off in the end zone Sunday, it was easy to flashback to those unsteady moments that made many wonder if he was prepared to be a full-time starter. Those thoughts can also creep into a player’s head, no matter what they say publicly. Gruden is trying to guard against that.
“Sometimes if he feels like he isn’t playing to the standards that we all have set for him, he feels like he’s letting everybody down,” Gruden said. “He’s got to understand, man, it’s is a tough position. He’s going to make some mistakes — everybody does — and you just have got to bounce back and just continue to play with the great confidence that’s made him the quarterback that he is. We have total faith that he will turn the corner.”
They would like that to start this week. Otherwise, 0-3 with two division losses is a likely topic for next Monday’s press conference.
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